and we slept in a tent, on the ground." Khairi's heart problems became worse, and he was medevaced out of the camp twice. Khairi said that although many of the Americans he had met at the clinics where he was treated had been kind, some military policemen with German shepherds would barge in and allow their dogs to terrorize the patients. (It was only later that he learned about the torture and sexual humiliation of prison- ers at Abu Ghraib) Once, he had seen a hooded, half- naked prisoner being herded by American soldiers into a wooden trailer, and leave some time later, hobbling as if in great pain. But, he said, "I don't know what they did to him." Khairi was bewildered by the de- meaning treatment of Iraqi prisoners. "The young men in my tents told me they were just waiting for the day they would get out so they could fight," he saId. "In the early days at Bukka, the Shia prisoners were not too much against the Americans, but after a few months even they changed their minds. I'd say that about ninety-five per cent of the Shia J met were talking about taking revenge." Almost every day; there were mortar attacks, Khairi recalled. "We noticed that they only attacked the American posi- tions inside the prison, not where the pris- oners were. The Iraqis were very happy when the attacks occurred. Some of them yelled, 'Allahu Akbar!' and said, 'This is God's punishment to the Americans for their ill-treatment of us.' Once the attacks became more frequent, they began hood- ing us whenever we went anywhere be- cause the prisoners were telling their vis- iting relatives the Americans' positions." Khairi was held at Abu G hraib for three and a half months without seeing his family; he found out later that they had tried to see him many times, and had been told that he wasn't there. He was finally released in F ebruaI}r, dressed only in a hospital gown. L ast April, two months before the C. A. was dissolved and in the midst of a dramatic upsurge in the vio- lence in Iraq, Paul Bremer announced measures that softened his original de- cree against the Baathists. He said that although "the de- Baathification policy was and is sound," it had been "poorly implemented." He noted the importance 78 THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 15, 2004 of gettIng teachers and professors back in their jobs. Bremer's announcement was widely interpreted as a move to give Allawi, the incoming Prime Minister, a freer hand to combat the insurgents by bringing Baathists back into government. In May; after the Marines' siege of Falluja was suspended-it is estimated that between six hundred and eight hundred Iraqis and forty Americans died during the siege-the Coalition ap- pointed a so-called Falluja Brigade, led by former Baath- IStS, to broker peace. The ef- fort failed, however, when many of the Brigade members joined the insurgents. Since assuming office, at the end of June, Allawi has appointed a number of Baathists to senior positions-most sig- nificantly; in the military and intelligence apparatus. He has also taken steps to weaken Chalabi further. In October, after a private visit to Israel by Mithal al-Alusi, Chalabi's ally on the de- Baathification commission, an Iraqi judge issued a war- rant for Alusi's arrest, invoking a Baathist- era law prohibiting travel to the Jewish state. Alusi telephoned me from Bagh- dad to say that he was determined to fight the charges. He added that Allawi's government had cancelled the creden- tials for all but :fifty of the two hundred members of the de-Baathification com- mission, suspended its funding, and dis- lodged its members from their offices. Dan Senor, the former chief spokes- man for the Coalition, is now in Wash- ington, where he still speaks to Bremer regularl At the end of August, I asked Senor how, on balance, Bremer now judged his decrees. Mer consulting with Bremer, Senor said, "Was it the right thing to do? Yes. We've had a militia problem in Iraq, but it would have been worse if we hadn't tackled this early on. For instance, the Shia could have been an enormous stumbling block to the Coali- tion if they had been uncoöperative, and yet we had clerics in their mosques telling people to forgo violence! And this was a tremendous support to the Coalition. If we had held back on de- Baathification, some have argued that the Sunni insur- gency would not have been as bad, but, in the complete picture, the fact that this meant so much to the Shia was crucial." At the time we spoke, the Marines were engaged in bloody confrontation With Moqtada aJ-Sadr's Shiite militia in Najaf But Coalition officials I spoke to argued that Najaf was, with the mediàs encouragement, a distraction from the greater threat posed by Zarqawi. How- ever, in addition to Zarqawi's group there are many Sunni guerrilla cells also operating in Falluja, as well as in the cities of Ramadi, Samarra, Baquba, and Mosul. Those cells are composed mostly of Iraqis, and, according to Baathists and to American officers I spoke with, at least some of them are funded and organized by former Baathists. Senor said, "The problems we have today with the Sunni insurgency I don't attribute solely to de-Baathification. These are not people who are simply up in arms because they are out of a job. We were always under the impression that the violence was being organized by people fundamentally opposed to our vi- sion of Iraq. They were not people we could win over." This is a point of contention with Baathists, as well as with many non- Baathists. In Amman, I spoke to Mudher Khairbit, a wealthy Iraqi businessman who is a senior sheikh of the Dulaimi, a Sunni tribe heavily involved in guerrilla activity in and around Falluja and Ra- madi. He told me that although he was not a Baathist he believed that the ban had been a mistake. Khairbit said, "By banning the Baath Part}) the Americans made it more powerful, more popular." In Baghdad, I had attended a FrIday prayer session at a mosque led by Imam Abdul Salaam Daud al-Qybeisi, a prom- inent Sunni cleric. He sermonized agalnst the American "occupiers" while lauding "heroic resistance fighters" in Falluja and Ramadi. A few days later, I visited Qy- beisi at his house. He portrayed the re- sistance as a spontaneous uprising by or- dinary Iraqis. "Before, the Iraqi people didn't think they were able to confront the American troops, but the hatred they feel encourages them to show resistance," he said. "What makes matters worse is that Bremer deals with Iraq as if it were Afghanistan. This is a big mistake. Al edàs members were fighting outside their own countries, but the Iraqi soldiers are not. They are in their own homeland. No Iraqis went to New York to hit it." I asked Qybelsi if he advocated the killing of American soldiers. His reply was ambiguous: "We have a code: He